Weakly Guarded Businesses Can Expect Decline in Revenue (Part 1)

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Some businesses may not regard implementing a rigorous authentication strategy among the most important steps to launching a successful operation. And until a data breach of customer information happens, they may feel validated in their decision to disperse security funds across other sectors.

But as soon as a malicious incursion occurs, any business that lacks the proper enterprise security will be left wishing they’d taken precautionary measures. That is because such an attack can not only leave a company with drained finances, but with diminished customer trust, as a recent study found.

Vast Majority of Customers Lose Faith in Breached Businesses

Any enterprise is built around a trusting bond between vendor and patron. When a customer swipes her card at checkout, she has a reasonable expectation that this information will only be used to complete the purchase and will not be stolen.

Unfortunately, this past year more than any other has demonstrated the fallibility of certain enterprise security measures within businesses. A series of retailers were hit particularly hard by cybercrime in the past few months, an event that never bodes well for the attacked company.

A recent survey carried out by OnePoll and sponsored by Semafone found out just how strongly customers respond to the news of a retailer data breach. Of the 2,000 people polled, a stunningly high 86 percent said that their odds of doing business with a breached company were either “not at all likely” or “not very likely,” according to Information Age.

“These figures should serve to underline what we should already know,” Semafone CEO Tim Critchley said, “that the reputational damage suffered by companies who fail to protect personal data can translate directly into a loss of business.”

But don’t take Critchley’s word for it alone — the statistics back his statement.

Businesses That Faced Credit Card Breaches in 2013 See Sales Decline

The year 2013 was, in many ways, that of the retail breach. Apart from the most widely reported attack on retail giant Target, there were a scattering of other malicious incursions into private consumer data, according to Reuters.

For companies that lack the authentication infrastructure to prevent an attack, the road to recovery is long, costly and paved with a loss of customer trust.

Tune in to Part 2 to read about the loss in business that breached companies suffered — and the lessons about enterprise security that can be learned from these episodes.

IdentityOn Blog

Entrust has been at the forefront of the identity-based security market for nearly two decades. Our identity-based security solutions secure governments, enterprises, and financial institutions in more than 5,000 organizations spanning 85 countries.